‘To Make a Man Without Reason’: Examining Manhood and Manliness in Early Modern England

Abstract

The conundrum of exactly what made a man, or constituted manhood, during the early modern period is something which historians and literary scholars have been puzzling over for the last 15 to 20 years. Much of the current scholarship has focused on relationships between men and women, pointing towards the necessity of marriage, family formation and economic independence in achieving manhood in early modern England.1 As a result, the significance of patriarchy in determining the prescripts of men’s familial and social roles, responsibilities and behaviour has become a prominent feature in studies of early modern manhood. The extent to which manhood was grounded in patriarchal ideology, or was available through many, varied and often contradictory means, is a question that is becoming increasingly pivotal within this burgeoning debate.2 In strictly prescriptive terms, manhood was identified as being that married, economically independent householder upon whom patriarchy insisted.3 Pursuing this line of thinking is not an attempt to posit the idea that manhood and patriarchy were synonymous, or that those men who did not achieve such social standing, for whatever reason, were somehow a breed of lesser or non-men. It is an attempt, however, to suggest that those men who did not achieve normative or full manhood could exert their manliness in other ways.4